OpenFGA
Ranked 2 of 4 authorization engines by recommenders
People recommend it for centralizing authorization policies and handling complex fine-grained ReBAC permissions.
People recommend it for centralizing authorization policies and handling complex fine-grained ReBAC permissions.
6 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Handles complex fine-grained ReBAC authorization
“I've found OpenFGA to be really nice. We used it to set up some pretty complex authz”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Better Auth is joining Vercel” “OpenFGA for fine-grained ReBAC authorization on every tool call”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “The way every agent framework handles MCP is a latent security problem” “if you want something more fancy ReBac (tools like openfga)”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you authorize AI agent actions in production?” Centralizes authorization outside application code
“systems like openfga can help make that easier by centralizing the authorization policies”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: How are you enforcing permissions for AI agent tool calls in production?” “it completely eliminate the AuthZ from our code.”
Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Taming P99s in OpenFGA: How we built a self-tuning strategy planner” Seen as mature and worth evaluating
“it’s worth taking a look at OpenFGA”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Permission Systems for Enterprise That Scale” “OpenFGA looks pretty mature already”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “Better Auth is joining Vercel”
Other authorization engines people recommend
The three most recommended other authorization engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cedar policy language | 7 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
| OpenFGAThis page | 6 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
| SpiceDB | 5 | 2 | 71% | 7 | — | — |
| Rego (Open Policy Agent) | 5 | 1 | 83% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“OpenFGA looks pretty mature already”
“I've found OpenFGA to be really nice. We used it to set up some pretty complex authz”
“OpenFGA for fine-grained ReBAC authorization on every tool call”
“systems like openfga can help make that easier by centralizing the authorization policies”
“if you want something more fancy ReBac (tools like openfga)”
“it completely eliminate the AuthZ from our code.”
“it’s worth taking a look at OpenFGA”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.